I attended a 1996 River Road High School graduation ceremony in support of my girlfriend at the time who was graduating from the school. Although I don’t recall what my own graduating class of Amarillo High School (1995) selected for a class song, I recall that of girlfriend’s.
From the 1973 album (Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd), by legendary Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, the graduates chose “Free Bird.” Describing the song, one source states:
The lyrics carry the emotional depth that Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for, capturing both the liberation and loneliness of freedom […] The lyrics tell the story of a man leaving a woman because he cannot bring himself to settle down with her. He expresses that he does not want to hurt her, but there are too many things he wants to do before committing to a relationship.
Although “Free Bird” was written about an end to a romantic relationship, people interpret different meanings of the song. In specific, it’s often associated with death. In the case of the River Road ’96 graduating class, the song symbolized liberation from high school.
Perhaps prophetically, when I attended Marine Corps recruit training several months following her graduation, my girlfriend sent me a Dear John letter. One can imagine her quoting a line from “Free Bird” that states, “‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change.”
Receipt of her letter was the only instance in boot camp during which I cried. She was the woman I planned on marrying. Throughout recruit training, I envisioned our life together and those beliefs about how our lives would one day unfold provided motivation during training.
Three days before graduating boot camp and becoming a Marine, I experienced a metaphorical death. Not intending to be hyperbolic, from the moment I received my girlfriend’s letter my life was divided into a pre- and post-letter era.
Rather than merely describing the matter as it was, acknowledging that intimate partner relationships often fail, I prescribed irrational beliefs about the issue. Through use of prescription and not description, I disturbed myself into a miserable condition.
Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), assessing that moment in time, I understand that I was the source of the misery I experienced. After all, no Dear John letter could actually produce the suffering I endured. For context, consider how REBT functions.
REBT theory uses the ABC model to illustrate how when Activating events (“Actions”) occur and people maintain irrational Beliefs about the events, these unhelpful assumptions – and not the actual occurrences – are what create unpleasant cognitive, emotive, bodily sensation, and behavioral Consequences.
In particular, there are four predominate irrational beliefs which people use: demandingness, awfulizing, low frustration tolerance, and global evaluations. Addressing these, the ABC model incorporates Disputation of unhelpful assumptions in order to explore Effective new beliefs.
From a psychological standpoint, people upset themselves using a Belief-Consequence (B-C) connection. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that in the context of the naturalistic or physical world there is no Action-Consequence (A-C) connection.
As an example, when performing many pushups in Marine recruit training, when my platoon was being disciplined (Action), I was unable to fully extend my arms the following day (Consequence). From an A-C perspective, increased muscular use can cause muscle fatigue.
However, from a B-C standpoint, when I received a Dear John letter (Action) and I unhelpfully Believed, “This shouldn’t happen, because it’s awful experiencing a breakup in boot camp,” it was my assumption and not the letter that resulted in a miserable outcome (Consequence).
During Marine recruit training, it was as though my conceived self who was associated with the pre-Dear John letter metaphorically turned to ashes when receiving news of the breakup. This metamorphosis occurred during a simultaneous transitional phase in my life.
My pre-boot camp self metaphorically died during the course of military training. Thus, my post-Dear John letter and post-boot camp self wasn’t the same as the pre versions of how I identified. I was different, as though I’d been reborn.
Doubtlessly, I’ve lost the attention of some readers at this point. After all, matters related to rebirth are typically reserved for religious, spiritual, or metaphysical discussions, not the topic of a Lynyrd Skynyrd-esque “free as a bird” condition after metaphorical death of a breakup.
Nevertheless, I encourage the reader to dispute unhelpful beliefs about what I’m communicating herein. You’re invited to entertain the existentialist lesson I’m conveying. Without exception, all humans will one day experience death—the end of life.
Conceptually, each of us also undergoes many metaphorical deaths before an inevitable end to existence as we currently understand it. In her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Buddhist author Pema Chödrön states of this matter:
We are raised in a culture that fears death and hides it from us. Nevertheless, we experience it all the time. We experience it in the form of disappointment, in the form of things not working out. We experience it in the form of things always being in a process of change. When the day ends, when the second ends, when we breathe out, that’s death in everyday life.
Given Chödrön’s perspective on metaphorical death, how could I argue against her conclusion? Essentially, through use of a syllogism, Chödrön’s logic and reason is as follows:
Form (hypothetical) –
If p, then q; if q, then r; therefore, if p, then r.
Example –
If it’s true that the exposure to the feared objects, activities or situations in a relatively safe environment helps reduce fear and decrease avoidance, then metaphorically dying throughout a lifetime can decrease fear of an inevitable end to life.
If metaphorically dying throughout a lifetime can decrease fear of an inevitable end to life, then it’s worthwhile to conceptualize the moment at which a day ends, when a second ends, or when we breathe out as representing metaphorical death in everyday life.
Therefore, if it’s true that the exposure to the feared objects, activities or situations in a relatively safe environment helps reduce fear and decrease avoidance, then it’s worthwhile to conceptualize the moment at which a day ends, when a second ends, or when we breathe out as representing metaphorical death in everyday life.
As Chödrön’s conceptualized proposal is both logical and reasonable, it’s in accordance with rationality. Thus, rational living involves acknowledgement of metaphorical death. Aside from this form of existentialism, REBT incorporates Stoicism into the psychotherapeutic modality.
As well, other philosophical perspectives aside from Stoics may prove valuable when addressing self-disturbance. In regard to the concept of learning how to die, so that one may lead an abundant life with what little time one has left in this existence, one source states:
Epicurus says, “Rehearse for death,” or, if this conveys the meaning better to us, “it’s a great thing to learn how to die.” Perhaps you think it useless to learn something that must only be used once; but this is the very reason why we ought to rehearse.
We must study always the thing we cannot tell from experience whether we know. “Rehearse for death”; the man who tells us this bids us rehearse for freedom. Those who have learned how to die have unlearned how to be slaves. It is a power above, and beyond, all other powers.
What matter to them the prison-house, the guards, the locks? They have a doorway of freedom. There’s only one chain that holds us in bondage, the love of life. If it can’t be cast off, let it be thus diminished that, if at some point circumstance demands it, nothing will stop or deter us from making ourselves ready to do at once what needs to be done.
Rehearsal for death is rehearsal for freedom. In “Free Bird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd apparently understood that the liberation and loneliness of freedom was a matter of perception.
As an example, my ex-girlfriend was liberated through a Dear John letter while I experienced loneliness in boot camp from the same written communication. Still, we were both free of one another all the same.
Although I would’ve preferred to have remained with her, my ex-girlfriend gave me a gift. She showed me that metaphorical death of my pre-boot camp self could lead to rebirth. In Greek mythological fashion, I was like the phoenix that obtained new life by rising from ashes of my predecessor.
Of course, physically speaking, I was still Deric. If one were to place me in a police lineup before attending recruit training and compare my image in a similar lineup after boot camp, there would’ve been no forbearer that was distinct from one version of me to another.
However, metaphorically speaking, pre-training Deric and post-boot camp Deric weren’t the same. I figuratively died and in doing so my then-girlfriend provided me with the opportunity to regenerate from my ashes. What a wonderful gift!
Learning how to die, or rehearsing for death, may be a useful practice throughout one’s literal life. Such preparation is especially poignant for those who encounter death in the form of a loved one or others who pass away.
This is because we are then reminded of an inescapable death. For instance, one source reports:
One of the most devastating incidents in the history of rock music occurred on October 20, 1977, when a Convair CV-240 passenger aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in a wooded area near Gillsburg, Mississippi, US, claiming 6 lives including three musicians from the iconic American rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Lynyrd Skynyrd fans from across the world were faced with the inevitability of their own deaths when members of the band perished in a plane crash. Of course, lyrics from “Free Bird” then took on a meaning other than merely the metaphorical death of a romantic relationship:
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now
‘Cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see
Death will one day become us all. For the Judeo-Christian reader, humans are said to have been formed from dust (Genesis 2:7) and will return to the dust (Genesis 3:19). As the saying goes, from ashes to ashes and from dust to dust.
For the secular reader, Carl Sagan is credited with having stated, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Regardless of one’s religious (dust) or secular (star-stuff) perspective, death will one day become us all.
Given this point of view, rehearsing for death so that one may live well is the important takeaway lesson I retain from Canadian rapper Snak the Ripper in his touching song “Ashes.” The song addresses the rapper’s dad, who apparently died of cancer, and the hook states:
You had a heart of gold and everybody knew it
Everything reminds me of you, I’m just trying to get through it now
I got your ashes in the truck and we just rolling
We got “Free Bird” on the stereo and every window open for you (x2)
Whether the ’96 graduating class of River Road High School using it as a farewell to education or regarding a Canadian rapper who used open, honest, and vulnerable communication when describing what his late dad meant to him, “Free Bird” represents metaphorical and literal death.
While you’re still here, alive in this very moment, it may be worth considering that you will one day die. This isn’t a fear-inducing realization any more than a Dear John letter could induce misery.
Rather, we can metaphorically die over and over again until we no longer exist in our current form so that we can learn how to die. In doing so, we rehearse for freedom, like a bird that practices at setting itself free. You, too, can escape your cage of self-disturbance.
With little more than a slight perspective shift, I eventually realized that my girlfriend in ’96 gave me a gift when breaking up with me. She showed me how miserable I could make myself. More importantly, her Dear John letter showed me who I could one day become without her.
Now I share information about REBT with others so that they can burn to ash their pre-knowledge selves while regenerating into a post-awareness life. If you would like to know more about learning how to metaphorically die so that you may live rationally, I’m here to help.
If you’re looking for a provider who works to help you understand how thinking impacts physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral elements of your life, I invite you to reach out today by using the contact widget on my website.
As the world’s foremost old school hip hop REBT psychotherapist, I’m pleased to help people with an assortment of issues from anger (hostility, rage, and aggression) to relational issues, adjustment matters, trauma experience, justice involvement, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression, and other mood or personality-related matters.
At Hollings Therapy, LLC, serving all of Texas, I aim to treat clients with dignity and respect while offering a multi-lensed approach to the practice of psychotherapy and life coaching. My mission includes: Prioritizing the cognitive and emotive needs of clients, an overall reduction in client suffering, and supporting sustainable growth for the clients I serve. Rather than simply helping you to feel better, I want to help you get better!
Deric Hollings, LPC, LCSW
References:
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